Break, Break, Break

By Alfred Lord Tennyson

Introduction
Alfred, Lord Tennyson composed "Break, Break, Break" in 1835, two years after
the death of his close friend and fellow poet, Arthur Hallam. Because the poem's
speaker laments the death of a close acquaintance, most readers read "Break,
Break, Break" as an elegy to Hallam, though the poem stands on its own as a
more general meditation on mortality and loss.
Analysis
The poem is four stanzas of four lines each, each quatrain in irregular iambic tetrameter. The
irregularity in the number of syllables in each line might convey the instability of the sea or the broken,
jagged edges of the speaker’s grief. Meanwhile, the ABCB rhyme scheme in each stanza may reflect
the regularity of the waves.

On the surface, the poem seems relatively simple and straightforward, and the feeling is easy to
discern: the speaker wishes he could give voice to his sad thoughts and his memories, to move and
speak like the sea and others around him. The poem’s deeper interest is in the series of comparisons
between the external world and the poet’s internal world. The outer world is where life happens, or
where it used to happen for the speaker. The inner world is what preoccupies him now, caught up in
deep pain and loss and the memories of a time with the one who is gone.
First stanza
The sea is battering the stones. The speaker appears frustrated that the sea can
keep moving and making noise while he is unable to utter his thoughts. The sea’s
loud roar, its ability to vent its energy, is something he lacks. The repetition of
“break” aptly conveys the ceaseless motion of the waves, each wave reminding
him of what he lacks.
second stanza
Tennyson similarly expresses distance between himself and the happy people
playing or singing where they are. They possess joy and fulfillment, whether
together or alone, but he does not. The brother and sister have each other; the
sailor has his boat; the speaker is alone. They have reason to voice pleasure, but
he does not. One might sense envy here, but “O, well” also suggests that these
blithe young people have losses yet to come.
third stanza
The poet sees the “stately ships” moving to their “haven under the hill,” either
to port or over the horizon. Either way, they seem content with a destination.
But the mounded grave is no pleasant haven, in contrast. That end means the
end of activity; there is no more hand to touch, no more voice to hear. Again the
speaker is caught up in his internal thoughts, his memory of the mourned figure
overshadowing what the speaker sees around him. The critic H. Sopher also
interprets the contrast in this stanza as such: “The stateliness of the ships
contrasts with the poet’s emotional imbalance; and the ships move forward to an
attainable goal ... while the poet looks back to a ‘vanish’d hand’ and a ‘voice
that is still.’”
fourth stanza
The speaker returns to the breaking of waves on the craggy cliffs. The waves
come again, again, again, hitting a wall of rock each time. But for him there is
no return of the dead, just the recurring pain of loss. Why speak, why act?
Sopher explains that “the poet’s realization of the fruitlessness of action draws
the reader’s attention to the fact that the sea’s action is, seemingly, fruitless
too—for all its efforts [it] can no more get beyond the rocks than the poet can
restore the past.” Nevertheless, both the sea and the speaker continue with
their useless but repeated actions, as though there is no choice. The scene
evokes a sense of inevitability and hopelessness.
themes
Loss and Impermanence This thought process is made evident by the fact that the
speaker goes from considering the retreating ships to
For the speaker of “Break, Break, Break,” the wistfully remembering the “touch of a vanish’d hand”—a
fleeting nature of life is deeply troubling. The phrase that underscores the speaker’s dismay that
poem implies that the speaker is mourning humans effectively “vanish” through death. In the same
someone’s death and being forced to face the fact way that the ships fade into the distance, humans also
that this person will never return. drift away from life.

The waves crashing against the shoreline represent Ironically enough, though, the only kind of permanence in
this idea of impermanence, since these waves no the speaker’s life is loss itself, since nothing will ever
longer exist in their original form once they’ve reverse the death of this friend. No matter what happens,
broken over the rocks. This reinforces the idea this person will “never come back” to the speaker. In
that nothing in the natural world lasts forever. And turn, loss actually emerges as the only dependable thing
because people obviously exist in the natural in life, even if it forces people like the speaker to
world, this also holds true for everyone who has recognize that everything else about existence is
ever lived. impermanent.
themes
The Difficulty of Moving On The anguish that feels so debilitating to the speaker
doesn’t even register for other people, and this
Stricken by grief, the speaker can hardly imagine a juxtaposition only heightens the speaker’s sorrow and
world in which it might be possible to embrace makes it even harder to move [Link] another way, the
happiness and undertake normal activities like speaker’s pain has to do with the fact that life has gone
sailing in the bay. However, the speaker doesn’t on even though the speaker has been immobilized by
need to imagine a world like this, since this kind of grief.
carefree joy is playing out directly before the
speaker’s eyes. Despite the speaker’s grief, the To make matters worse, the speaker is not only unable to
world carries on like normal. move on, but also conscious that the past is “dead” and
will “never come back.” Consequently, the speaker is
This dynamic emphasizes the fact that what the frozen in place, stuck between a longing for the
speaker feels in this moment is at odds with the irretrievable past and an inability to engage with the
simple reality that the rest of the world is present. In turn, readers see just how difficult it is to
proceeding unbothered. move on in moments of sorrow, especially when the
surrounding world seems so indifferent to a person’s pain
and emotional suffering.
TONE
The poem proceeds in a very gloomy tone describing the rough phases of life and
even the pleasant phases he describes is only coupled with his contrasting dark
emotions. The tone of the poem is gloomy as well as negative that is clearly
present in its entire framework of the different happenings that take place in the
sea and the poet’s socially retreating emotions with regard to them. The poet
manages to instil his depressing state of mind in the struggling, continuing and
treasured moments he observes in the sea and thus maintains a holistic
suppressed sorrow caused by the death of his close friend.
POETIC DEVICES
● Metaphor – “And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill” – the ship is a metaphor of
life.
● Personification – “…a day that is dead” – Giving an inert thing like day, a character.
● Synecdoche – “But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand/And the sound of a voice that is still” –
hand, voice.
● Onomatopoeia – “Break” – sound of the waves.
● Style-

“Break, Break, Break, (A)

On thy cold gray stones, Of sea! (B)

And I would that my tongue could utter (C)

The thoughts that arise in me” (B)

This is the most important
takeaway that ONE has to
remember IN THIS POEM
Thanks!